10/09/2012

Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy: "I Will Spend a Shitload of Money On Shit We Don't Need":
The Rude Pundit has read and re-read Republican candidate Mitt Romney's "Great and Grand October 8, 2012 Speech on Foreign Policy That Pretty Much Repeats His Great and Grand October 7, 2011 Speech on Foreign Policy." And the takeaway is this: Romney's plan for the United States to remain the most exceptional exception in the history of exceptionalist exceptionalism is to spend shitloads of money and pay off his defense industry cronies...and not much else, actually.

Look at what he promises, in one of the only specific statements in the entire speech: "I will restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions by building 15 ships per year, including three submarines. I will implement effective missile defenses to protect against threats." And, of course, he'll restore the very minor cuts to the military should the budget sequester go into effect, something that, you know, his running mate voted for.

So there you go: Mitt Romney will cut the fuck out of domestic spending, give tax cuts to millionaires, and raise defense spending, which, truth be told, would probably end up causing unemployment to go down because motherfuckin' submarines ain't gonna build themselves, and, fuck, that's way more important than spending money on roads and teachers and other things that'd make the country better and employ a lot of people. Oh, no, that's socialism. But giving billions of dollars to Northrup? That's just pump-priming. And if we go further into debt because of it? Why, that's Reaganesque. (How many of Bain Capital's corporations get defense contracts? Probably in the neighborhood of "many." Wonder how that inflates the Romney retirement portfolio?)

Otherwise, what the fuck did Romney say? It was a "moderate" version of the speech he gave almost a year ago to the date, just with the extra sneer at the Obama administration over the Libya consulate attack. And, man, Benjamin Netanyahu wishes he got his dick sucked half as well by actual, real Israelis. But what is Romney offering? There was no real foreign policy, other than he will be leading it. The President rains murder through robot death drones on Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. And yet Romney has no problem with that part of Obama's actions.

No, all that Romney seems to say is that other countries think they can walk all over Obama and they won't be able to walk all over him. And one supposes we should believe that because...Romney was an asshole when he ran the Olympics? Yes, arguing with the Romanian ice dancing coach is just like negotiating a trade agreement with China.

It's the same as everything else. Empty words and the promise that he will talk to people. On Afghanistan, he says, "I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders." That's the same approach to naming tax loopholes and deductions he'd get rid of. He'll won't tell you an actual plan. He'll tell you who he'll talk to about it.

(By the way, if the Rude Pundit were a citizen of any other country, he'd be fucking chilled to the bones to hear a major party candidate in the U.S. say, "[I]t is the responsibility of our President to use America’s great power to shape history." Oh, fuck, are we gonna do another preemptive war? Who now? Syria? Mexico? Christ al-fucking-mighty.)